


i'm only trying (we're only trying) to get home

by moonbeatblues



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, M/M, an au that was supposed to be supernatural and about ghosts, but again somehow is about beau and loneliness and slipping dimensions, nothing specific, tw: mentions of a car accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23342383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: “How come I never knew this was here?” She cranes her neck to see where the canopy seems to almost knit itself together overhead. “I’m the one who met Deuces first.”Jester’s still knelt down, rifling for something in her bag— Beau thinks she shrugs, but the motion is mostly lost— “You weren’t here very long, though.”(“No, hey, we don’t have time for—” but Caduceus Clay is already bowing his head to go back inside, humming. “—tea.”Caleb takes a seat on a leaning gravestone, thinks better of it, and stands. “It will be okay, Beauregard. We are not in a rush. It could have been much worse.”She blinks.It could have been much worse.)(beau and jester look for ghosts, and somehow it's not really about ghosts at all)
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf, Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, the ghost is mollymauk okay. it's him.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	i'm only trying (we're only trying) to get home

**Author's Note:**

> lyrics from drunk drivers/killer whales— the actual title doesn't relate, i don't want the iron shepherds to be a drunk driver, but part of me wants to just have one au where beau and caleb and nott met caduceus because the nein's van broke down and they went looking for help. so i wrote it, but kind of. not, at the same time.
> 
> i promise i PROMISE the incorrect things about tarot are intentional— i wanted to write about tarot the way people who use it as a vehicle to connect to each other use it (which is, to say, how i feel like tarot should be). they get stuff wrong, they read some instructions and not others, they use the drawings specific to their own deck. all that jazz.

“How come I never knew this was here?” She cranes her neck to see where the canopy seems to almost knit itself together overhead. “I’m the one who met Deuces first.”

Jester’s still knelt down, rifling for something in her bag— Beau thinks she shrugs, but the motion is mostly lost— “You weren’t here very long, though.”

(“No, hey, we don’t have time for—” but Caduceus Clay is already bowing his head to go back inside, humming. “—tea.”

Caleb takes a seat on a leaning gravestone, thinks better of it, and stands. “It will be okay, Beauregard. We are not in a rush. It could have been much worse.”

She blinks.

_It could have been much worse._

In her mind’s eye, she sees the big family van crumpled inward in big pockets, tossed down the hill alongside the road like a sack of flour with one of the seats crushed completely against the unyielding trunk of a tree. It’s the seat no ever really seems to sit in, but somehow she thinks it wasn’t empty.

 _Dunno how I was able to keep us on the road after that,_ Fjord says. _Impact shoulda sent us flying. Just glad everyone’s okay._

“Everyone’s okay,” she breathes.

“Hm?”

“Nothing.” She folds her arms and leans decisively on a gravestone.

Caleb doesn’t press. After a silent minute, watching the patterns of shadow slide a little ways further along the ground, Caduceus returns with four cups, ranging in size.

She drinks fast, lets it burn. Everyone’s okay, but somehow it feels like if they stay, they won’t be.)

“Yeah. When’d you have the time to come back here, though?”

“Oh, Caduceus just told me about it one night. I’ve never been behind the house, either.”

“Then how do you know there’s anything here?”

“Caduceus said so,” Jester says, blithe, and stands. “Come on, it’s gonna get dark fast.”

(“Beau’s _boring_ ,” Jester says, and knocks into Beau’s side. “She doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

Most days, you know, it doesn’t feel like that weird of a thing, but Caduceus leans towards her over the table and suddenly she’s the odd one out.

Well, with just Jester and Caduceus, it seems like she always is.

“That so?” Caduceus says— _he comes off shrewd,_ Beau thinks, _when he looks at people like this,_ but the thing about shrewd people is, they want you to know they think you’re wrong. Want you to know they know something you don’t. Want to make you feel like they’ve got something on you.

Caduceus is just curious. She can’t hold it against him.

“I dunno, I just haven’t seen anything convincing yet, I guess.” Her gaze slides back over to Jester, the ends of her mouth turned downward, and she feels guilty, somehow. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Not disappointing, Beau,” Caduceus smiles. “If anything, it’s to be respected. You believe in what you see, that’s not bad. It would be bad,” and here he turns to Jester, “if she was not willing to go and see for herself if there is something to see. Take it as a compliment, that she wants to see what you want to show her. It’s not something everyone gets.

Beau’s face feels hot— _god_ , she’s forgotten how good Deuces can be at figuring out the entirety of her. With Jester, she imagines, it’s especially easy. They all know she’s sunk and gathering silt.

But Jester just grins, leans forward towards Caduceus and takes Beau’s hand in both of hers, squeezing fierce and eyes even moreso.

“Oh, I know. That’s why I’m gonna take her to the garden.”

Caduceus laughs.

“Ah. Now there is a place to find new belief.”)

—

The Clay property is…. weird.

Any house would be if it were built on graveyard land, but, like, it didn’t have to be what it is.

(“Well, it wasn’t built on the graveyard,” Caduceus says. “The graveyard was built onto it.”)

It’s private land, for one thing— a century or two back, the Clays started getting visitors to their strange little stone house on the outskirts of the forest, people who wanted to buy their tea.

 _It’s off-putting to everyone,_ Beau thinks, _the first time, to hear they grow the tea from graves_. But the taste, well, it can’t really be argued with. And in that funny way that people do, especially if there’s someone who’s done it first, some of the visitors decided they wanted to be part of it. Wanted to give to something even past when they knew they were doing it.

It’s a nice sentiment. Maybe she’d do it, too, like she knows Fjord wants to, but, well. Every time she thinks about rest, she just thinks about Nicodranas. And that’s not really the sort of thing she’s ready to ask— carries a whole mess of feelings she’s afraid to say, afraid to feel. And Jester doesn’t like talking about death— doesn’t like talking about Beau dying, at least. There’s a special frown she gets, this particular angry scrunch to her mouth.

Beau slides a look along the path towards her— they’re at where the trees start to crop up, now, and before them she can see less orderly rows of gravestones, covered much more thoroughly and much less neatly in fauna. All kinds, not just tea-flowers.

It’s a graveyard, still, but Beau understands now why _this_ is the garden. All the work of a real garden is in the soil, the tending, the care. Not deciding what can and can’t grow.

Jester turns, eyes wide. She'd timed it pretty perfectly, Beau thinks, it’s properly dusk now, purple spreading across the sky from the east.

“Beau!” She whispers. “Do you feel it?”

“Nope.”

And she doesn’t, really. It’s getting dark, for sure, and they’re on the edge of a forest that, technically, is not classified as an Empirical Park because of “problems with surveying”— it’s a fancy way, Caduceus told them, of saying that the people who went into the forest to see if it was safe for visitors never came back. And that the Empire gave up on trying to buy it from the Clays.

(“Besides, they would never get it anyway,” Caduceus says, tilting his cup to get a better look at the leaves. “The Grove is sacred ground. We’re not interested in money.”

“But,” and Fjord gestures at Caduceus’s torso, the long sleeve starting to tear into two gauzy halves from repeated wear. “Cash might not be the worst thing in the world to have?”

“Well, yes,” Caduceus blinks, like it’s obvious. “That’s why I came with you all. Mister Fjord, did you get anything out of yours?”

“What? Oh—” and Fjord looks into his cup, face darkening. It’s funny, to see him earnest, he never used to be, “I dunno, can you show me again?”

Caduceus sidles closer along the carved booth seat to peer into Fjord’s mug, fits his hands over Fjord’s, and Beau tips her chair back with a loud sigh and thinks that _cash is the last thing on Caduceus’s mind._ )

Jester pouts again— she really puts her whole body into it, sort of deflates, and Beau, she just. Doesn’t know what to do? Doesn’t know how to feel something when she _doesn’t_ , doesn’t want Jester to be sad, but all she feels is guilty and a little cold.

“Maybe give it some time?” she says. Jester looks at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed, and then she sits, doesn’t even look behind her and drops like a stone between two graves.

“Okay. If you need time, we’ll take time.” Jester starts digging through her bag again, and produces the tarot cards she’s been fiddling with for weeks now, wrapped in silk and rubber bands.

(“Why silk, again?”

“The book said,” Jester puffs out her chest a little proudly— _she likes to tell Beau things,_ Beau thinks, _likes to be the one who knows something first_. And, so, Beau likes asking Jester things. “It strengthens the connection. Helps them feel loved.”

 _Anything Jester has doesn’t need silk to feel loved,_ she thinks, and says “Don’t the rubber bands sort of cancel it out?” instead.

“I don’t know how else to keep it on! Silk is _slippery_ , Beau,” and Jester comes and bats at Beau’s hands so she can take the deck away. “Besides, I don’t think they can tell.”

A little crease sits between her eyebrows, though, and Beau wants to kick herself for it, wishes she could just ask things honest and not rough, the way she’s used to asking. Wishes connecting felt easier.

 _Maybe,_ something buried deeps says, _you should wrap her in silk,_ and she shoves it deeper.)

“Can I give you a reading? I think I’m finally—” and she drops her voice at this, so low Beau wouldn’t recognize her next words if she hadn’t flipped through the little booklet— “psychically connected, now.”

She looks at the faded cards, where one is loose, half showing through the silk. A hand, holding something— a staff? A sword?— away from her. She doesn’t remember the cards specifically, their meaning, but _upside down_ , she remembers, _that’s almost never good._ And upside down it is.

Something cold runs along her spine. Maybe Jester will get her to feel something, after all. “Go for it.”

Jester fiddles with the cards for a while— finding the major arcana, she thinks— and then presents them to Beau.

“Here,” she says. “Shuffle these for a while, and start to think about what you want to ask.”

Somewhere in the deck is the card she’d seen, the hand, holding its prize away from her. For a moment, she has the urge to flip through and find it, but that would _definitely_ be disrupting the connection.

She separates them into two piles and shuffles, normally crisp and now muffled by soft edges, by years of use. Where had Jester gotten these again? She’d had to buy the booklet separately, at a crystal shop while Caduceus had ducked in with Fjord in tow.

_Where did these come from?_

A headache is brewing in her temples, fuzzy and threatening to coalesce. She resorts to just shifting the cards apart and together, and tries to think of her question.

Jester doesn’t need to know it— for a brief second, she entertains the idea of knowing just how fucked she is, having Jester tell her, indirect as it is— but entertaining is all it is.

“You think of it yet?” Jester’s tugged the fleece blanket out of her bag, and lays it out to sit on.

“Yeah, uh,” and she shifts onto a corner of the blanket, puts the deck down gingerly. “You might need to help me rephrase it, though.”

“Of course!” Jester cups her hands on either side of the deck, like it’s a candle, like parentheses.

“Okay. I want to know if there are ghosts here.”

“ _Beau,_ ” Jester says, pulls her name out, “there _are_ , Caduceus said. Can’t you feel it?”

“No,” she ducks her head a little. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Jester says, and it’s stupid, how serious their voices are when it’s just about ghosts and graveyards. It feels like it’s something else, like she’s not _getting_ something. “Maybe if we pick a good question, you’ll feel it.”

Beau looks at her for a moment. The moon’s thin tonight, and rising just over the trees. Everything feels strangely still. She feels a funny certainty bloom in her chest.

“Why can’t I feel the ghosts here?”

Jester’s eyes go wide. “Perfect.”

—

Jester does a standard spread. She doesn’t tell Beau, but she remembers the diagram. She presents the deck to Beau each time, and then places the chosen card, all in silence.

It’s a fall night— should be cold out, _is_ cold out— but something about this, maybe how Jester’s stopped talking other than _here_ and _next_ and _okay_ , maybe how the trees offer some cover from the wind, or, fuck, maybe it _is_ ghosts— feels like there’s a bubble, drawn around the two of them.

“First card,” Jester says, “the present.”

(“It’s funny,” Jester says. She’s hanging a little ways off the couch, upside down and holding the cards fanned out above her. “Some of them are blank. I didn’t think that was a thing in tarot.”

Beau frowns. “It’s not, I don’t think.”

_Why didn’t she ask where Jester got them?_

“Guess I’ll have to draw them in, huh?” She pulls the cards closer. “Do you remember where I put my watercolors?”

“Yeah, they’re in my room. Is that— are you allowed to do that?”

Jester turns to look at her, as best she can. Her hair floats below her in a short blue cloud, strands falling across her face. “They’re already blank, Beau. I think we’re in uncharted waters.”)

It’s one of the ones Jester has drawn in, she can tell immediately. An enormous moon, full and heavy, hangs just above center, and just below center it’s reflected in water as a face, dark eyes and mouth.

It’s like nothing Jester’s drawn before. It’s reserved, eerie.

It’s upside down.

Jester sucks in a breath between her teeth.

“Next card. The origin.”

A building, bisected. The top half hangs just right of where it should be, about to fall.

“You.”

Another of Jester’s. A man, lying on the ground, curled around the low light of a lantern. Upside down.

“Your surroundings.”

A hearth, the fire low but not gone. The kind of fire good for proper cooking, the kind of fire that needs tending.

“Your fears or hopes.”

Jester’s, again.

Two angels— real angels, she thinks, the kind that make you understand why divinity in holy texts is translated as _terrible_ — long feathered necks twining like snakes until their faces meet in the middle, too many eyes open.

“The outcome.”

A circle pierced through with four arrows, like the spikes of a wheel. Upside down.

Beau speaks first.

“They’re all major arcana.”

Jester bites her lip.

God, Beau doesn’t— she doesn’t _believe_ in this stuff. The air feels uncomfortably still, like it’s solidifying. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

That funny feeling opens in her chest again, certainty less like a flower and more like a mouth.

“Can you run back to the house? Caduceus said he’d have tea ready, and I’m getting cold. Besides, you can grab the booklet.”

“Can I— _what_? Beau, I don’t—“

“It’s okay,” she says, and doesn’t look at Jester, just watches the still figure of the man around the lantern, shadows creeping in from the corners to steal the light. “I just need a minute.”

Jester stands and dusts off her skirt, alright, but stays looking down at Beau for a long moment before Beau hears the soft sounds of her stepping back amongst the plants, avoiding blooms and fungal caps, back to the distant loom of the property.

No one speaks to her, she just. Knows it’s being said, the same way she knew that the van seat wasn’t empty. The same way she knows it happened, somewhere far away. Somewhere that feels a little closer, now.

_Would you like a reading, Beauregard?_

“You don’t need the book?”

_They were my cards._

“Even Jester’s? You _can’t_ tell me she followed the actual rules, there’s no way.”

_She was my friend, too, you know._

“Yeah, sure.”

What?

_First card. The full moon, inverted. Things are not as they should be._

“No shit.”

_Second. The tower. A chaotic beginning. Something changed._

In her mind, the car bends around the tree. She and Caleb are walking the same road, Veth on Caleb’s shoulders, but it’s snowing. She’s crying.

“I don’t understand.”

_Third. The hermit, inverted. You feel alone._

It’s cold, again. She’d say she didn’t notice when it had crept back in, but she knows down to the moment.

“Yeah, whatever. Next.”

_Fourth. The hearth. There is warmth to be had, if you are willing to stoke it. If you let yourself get close enough._

A square of light opens in the distance— a door, opened outward. A figure, returning.

“Think so?”

_Fifth. The beloved. A fear, or a hope, Beauregard?_

“Depends on who’s being beloved, I guess.”

_Sixth. The wheel, inverted. The cycle will break._

“Hasn’t it already?”

—

Jester hands her a mug— it’s the one with little bees, yellow-paint thumbprints drawn over with little black stripes and wings, different sizes because, well, everyone’s hands are different sizes.

A birthday present. She thinks of the hearth, imagines opening up a brick of charcoal to reveal the red glow within. Hidden under wintry ash, but alive.

“What were you saying, earlier?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, just thinking about the cards.”

Jester pauses to puff out a breath, sending steam rolling from the lip of her mug— handmade, with _Clarabelle Clay_ scrawled messily on the underside. “I couldn’t find the book, I’m sorry. Do you remember where I put it?”

Somehow, she knows it’s gone. “Nah. No big deal,” and she gestures for Jester to crawl over to her side. “I think I figured it out.”

“ _Beau_ ,” Jester draws out the syllable again, like a worn spring, “That was supposed to be my job.”

But she crawls over anyway, sets down her mug and shuffles around the spread until she’s pressed against Beau’s side. “Oh, well. How come you can’t feel it?”

Jester runs cold, and she hasn’t had any of her tea yet, but she just keeps thinking of the hearth. Of the man, opening the door of the lantern to let the light pour out and over him. The angels, their moonlike faces pressed together.

“It’s just hard for me not to feel alone.”

Jester’s quiet, for a long moment. Her arms are wound so her hands meet over Beau’s other hip, and Beau feels her hold an inhale.

“But?”

_The keeper of a cycle is the only one who can break it._

She presses her mouth against the crown of Jester’s head and tries not to shake. “But I think I’m figuring it out.”

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr!! still taking requests, but i'm a little hung up on mech au right now so if you wanna ask about That i'm especially all ears


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